nrgized

The modest jr software engineer can look at any random file and realize its lucky things are even playable in its current form. /End Armchair software engineer in the film industry.

I'm in the process of moving so I'm AFK from being able to do anything at the moment. Cross country relocation blah :(

New version added to the first post of this thread. One notable new thing in the mod is all user modifiable vars are located in a new file nvg_mod.hlsl. Please update your values their for custom modifications. Responding to the last couple of posts in this thread... Noise: First to do a proper no noise mod would require access to DCS source. This is because I'm only able to modify the shaders that are called. I cant add new ones or even multiple passes (which is a bummer because if the game code followed the general idea of how you read a hlsl fx file it should support it :/). A mod that had lots of noise in low light and no noise in high ambient light would require a simple find the average lum of the scene and apply noise filter accordingly. Because of the issue just stated not possible. Well its possible but I'd have to do the calculation for each and every pixel rendered over and over again and that would just kill the fps of the mod. Zooming and Distortion: Dealing with lens distortion is an every day fact in my line of work. Is the lens distorting correct? No. Is it even close. No. Its not even really lens distortion as its only happening on the edges. Merely more of a creative license in this mod and since its an option I don't see much of an issue with it. Although adding correct lens distortion could be made into an option provided someone game me a lens grid chart. Zooming is real but the issue is how much should it do. Again its current value is guess and used as creative license. If others would like to provide a more realistic zoom level I'd be happy to incorporate its value as the default.

You can turn the zooming off, its one of the options listed in the readme file.

I took the liberty and did that as a creative license... Sorta like turning them off. If enough dont like it I can remove the feature. Cheers!

Are you speaking of another version of this mod or another mod entirely? Since I first started this mod its always been fullscreen/windowed supported. Sorry I don't really understand what you are referring to. @Winz Thanks for the pic!

Also please post your EYE_CENTER and EYE_SIZE settings before and after.

Hey winz, Could you please do me a favor and post me 2 images? IMG A: Just a screenshot from DCS of the problem. IMG B: Same image as A but with an overlay defining which parts are from each monitor. Which monitor is which shouldn't matter when its all 0-1 based so I'm a bit confused. Thanks

Attached to this post is the first pass at 1.0v4 beta 1. It includes all my previously mentioned items in the post above. It also includes the Ka-50 supplied by others in this thread but be aware its likely to change as I just got the supplied mods in and didn't touch them other then to make them work. If you do not like the color lifting that is applied as you gain your NVGs up, set the var NVG_COLOR_LIFT to 0 for the appropriate aircraft. I left the Ka-50 at 0 for the time being. The effect is subtle as its only a 0.175 life and is weighted. None the less you know where to go to turn it off. Editing the Ka-50 for those that plan to... It should be pretty straight forward where you go to do your business when you look at the file. Vars that are shared between aircraft are in ordered arrays with the A-10 as index 0 and the Ka-50 at index 1. Any questions please ask. Screenshots in the post above this one are pretty accurate to this release as I didn't make many visual changes since those were taken. Cheers *edit* Thanks Chazz! nvg_mod_1.0v4b1.zip

Here is what will come in the next beta later today. Color tweaks and size suggestions from this thread. The next version has an added color correction that adds a slight lift to the image as you increase sensitivity. This will lesson the crunch and contrast of the image. Its artistic license in that on no moon lit nights you have crunch and on them you don't. Since the mod doesn't know the state of the moon it makes a half way compromise. It is an option and you can turn it off if you so desire. (code) A-10 and Ka-50 are built into the same functions so others can edit the settings without having to hack the thing apart. Blur is reduced on super brights so they dont look all up in your face. Attached are some images of what the output for the A-10 will look like in the build. Suggestions comments if you have any pls. Cheers

Hi Peter, Thanks I had seen how to enable it, I was refering to any real life images of the NVGs for the Ka-50 though :) BTW I've also setup the code so you guys and tweak it with suggetions easier and you dont have to go defining your own stuff. Should post an update later today.

I like it chazz! So I've merged the color changes from chazz now on to the the 50. Can someone give me a photo/video of the real thing, doing the moving random static band is possible and once I have that I'll merge the 50 in for a final publish.

Uh so I got luasocket working and I can pull in yahoo weather info... Should I dare?

Hello, This mod simply adds a "Local Time" option to the quick and advanced mission editor menus. When the radio button is selected your current local time will be used for the mission start. File attached to post. PS No it doesn't check the weather channel for your local forecast and modify the mission appropriately. me_localtime_1.0v1.zip

Lots of good ideas and points made. I'm gonna toss the yellow tint into the mod as suggested and I'll have a look at the border tweaks you mentioned which I'm almost positive will get put in as well. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is in my current dev version I modified the blurring of the NVG area. Instead of the default 16x16 blur that the game does, the mod is mixing from a 4x4, 8x8, and 16x16 blur based on the luminance under NVGS. This gives a better soft edge around darker objects and a bigger blur for brighter objects. Some thoughts... Depth Blurring Peter I had seen your concept for in goggle blurring however I was just messing around with outer blur. Your points about a clickable cockpit I was well aware of :). I actually first ran into that issue when zooming the goggles viewpoint in. Because the NVG area is zoomed in mouse clicks are not in the correct position if you try and click inside the NVG area. Lets talk for a moment as if I had the zbuffer access for a realistic version. Areas outside the NVG: Cockpit The cockpit I would blur a ton. I would do this as a two pass process though. The reason for a two pass process would be so that I could calculate the average min and max depth values. Bassed on that information I could lower or even remove the blur on the cockpit. This would allow detection that you are heads down (becuase the average depths would be low). This would be a usability feature and is creative license more then realism. It would be super cool if ED would set a float3 value passed to the shader that represented the camera vector. This would allow for much easier detection when looking down. Outside the aircraft (the world) Outside the cockpit I would blur the world and add bokeh effects so that citys and lights appear brighter. In my hackjob super blur test it was awesome looking at citys, they appeared to twinkle on the horizon. Areas inside the NVG: Overall To be honest I don't think I'd do to much. This is an area that I think would get more creative license then realism. I can't really say much without being able to play around with it. Its such a tricky spot with the HUD and all that you might not be able to do to much because of limitations. Noise I'm going to try and see about setting up a two pass filter for the noise. What I would like to do is figure out the average luminescence of the NVG area and based on that determine how much noise to apply. Thus when your NVGs are getting a lot of light coming in they show little to almost no noise. When the NVG area is much darker the noise will show itself much more. This is pretty much how I would expect it to be IRL and what I've seen in videos and commented on by people. Lots of ambient light equals little grain, little light equals lots of grain. Thats it for now thanks all for the feedback. Oh and as for the Ka-50 version, I'd like to wrap this up but I don't see why we couldnt do one for that too. I don't have that DCS mod but I'm sure thats not a barrier we cant overcome :). Cheers!

You know, when I was doing the look dev on the blur I was just flying in circles. I wondered what it was like flying the mountains and what it would be like with the limited view. Well let me tell ya... Its claustrophobic as all hell having no peripheral vision! Who do I have to pay at ED for the zdepth pass given to the post process effects buffer? :)

Don't have a new version today, spent yesterday just messing around with ideas. As Peter pointed out depth of field would be killer, unfortunately post process effects have no access to the zbuffer. ED would have to pass the zbuffer in as a texture and it would be super killer if they added that feature. Currently the textures alpha is just a straight value of 1.0 and I wouldn't see it being missed if it were instead replaced with the z That or pass it in as a second single channel texture. @JG14 and ajax I came to PSL for the fail train of DD and just havent left yet, even though its been over a year now I dont know the local area much nor the lingo :). Even though the images (attached to this post) are totally incorrect in depth, bokeh, etc... None the less its still cool to see what it could possibly look like. I've included a few screenshots of the mod heavily tweaked trying its darnedest to show what it could look like if the zbuffer were available. I wont release this bastardized version as it only looks nice in the screenshots. Anywhere else and your cockpit is lit up like someone droped a couple hundred glowsticks on your lap :). Cheers!

Hi Peter, The config options in the file allow for multiple monitor and different aspect ratio setups. Everything is UV coord based so you can move and re-shape things. The shape was minimal as it was a first pass :) I've just uploaded a new version (At the start of the thread attached) that tweaked the noise, shape, and also adds lens distortion to the edges of the lens for those that are interested. If you dont like the distortion you can turn it off in the file by setting ENABLE_RIM_DISTORT to "0". You can see the lens distortion at the top of the HUD. Cheers!

Info: So while I have a few *issues* with nighttime in this game (insert smiley face), I decided to mess with the NVGs a little bit. Credit goes to this post of getting me thinking of this mod, wish I could of done more but this is all for now. Installation: Download the attached zip from this post and install files to DCS World. Make sure to edit DCS World/config/graphics and change PrecompiledEffects mode to "USE_PRECOMPILED_EFFECTS_FOR_UNCHANGED_FILES" (Its already there, but commented out). Not doing so will not let this mod work! Color: The NVG mod desaturates the areas under the NVGs as their brightness increases. This reflects what you see in most images taken through night vision goggles such as the image below. Noise: A Slight hint of noise is added to the area under the effect of the NVGs Perception: While this is a hack in its current form it none the less is trying to produce something based on the real world. Because the sensor on NVGs is not at the same XYZ coordinate as your eyeballs retina in real life, the image that you see makes objects appear to be closer. Think of the AH-64 Apache, its nightvision cameras are on the front of the aircraft. What the pilot see's through his helmet display is not that as if it were through his eye but some 5-8ft or so in front of him. The NVG mod does a half baked version of this and simply scales the image area under the effect of the NVGs up. Fullscreen Mode (Optional): You can run with NVGs in full screen. Options: You can tweak the mod through few options to customize the output to something more of your fitting. Release notes 1.0v2: nvg_mod_1.0v4b2.zip

So I've almost had the game for a week and I'm genuinely pleased. It's been a very long time since I've bought a flight sim, were talking about going back to Janes Long Bow 2 days :(. One of the things I wanted to do off the bat was take my rusty flight skills up and do a little in-flight refueling. I browsed around and while I found some info most of it was pretty obvious. So after struggling for a day I finally nailed it when I stopped using both engines and instead focused on just tweaking a single engine to get me in that sweet spot. Worked like a charm. Don't know why I had it in my head that just because I have two engines I have to tweak them both. Anyways cheese filled vid Cheers